


The Things We Do to Each Other

by laireshi



Category: Devil May Cry
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Bittersweet, M/M, Time Travel, Twincest, and post-DMC5 Dante in the present, featuring post-DMC3 Dante in the past
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-01
Updated: 2019-06-01
Packaged: 2020-04-05 19:38:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19047025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laireshi/pseuds/laireshi
Summary: A portal accidentally transports Vergil twenty years back. He's not prepared for the discovery he makes when he meets Dante in the past.





	The Things We Do to Each Other

_He’s so young_.

Somehow that’s the first thing that runs through Vergil’s mind when he steps out of his portal and into the Devil May Cry office. Not that the decoration is different or that the Rebellion is somehow whole again, no; just that _Dante seems young_.

Vergil wraps his fingers around the Yamato, assuring himself it’s there, that it’s not some sort of an illusion, he’s not back in Mundus’—

He swallows. He focuses on Dante. He remembers him like this, on top of the Temen-Ni-Gru; his last glimpse of Dante before . . . _Before_.

Dante still hasn’t found a shirt to wear. Vergil is reasonably certain he’s travelled in _time_ in addition to _space_ —he should have known better than to open a portal that close to a fallen Geryon—but he isn’t quite certain whether he’s facing a Dante who hasn’t yet met him again, or a Dante who’d fought him on Temen-Ni-Gru . . . A Dante who hadn’t followed him for the first time in their lives when Vergil pushed him away—and Vergil is still pathetically grateful for that; that his fate was his alone, that Dante did not have to live through the horrors of his memories.

Dante doesn’t acknowledge him. He runs his eyes over Vergil, once, and then he takes a swig out of a bottle he’s holding. Vergil frowns, noticing too many empty bottles on the floor. He inhales deeper and the stench of alcohol hits him.

“Foolishness, Dante,” he says. “We are not human. What are you trying to achieve?”

Dante freezes in the middle of setting his bottle down. “You don’t usually talk.”

His words are slurred, so he must have succeeded in getting himself inebriated after all. Vergil hadn’t realised that was possible. Trust Dante to explore that aspect of their physiologies.

Vergil walks up to him and uses two fingers to raise Dante’s chin in his direction. A long shiver runs through Dante; he leans into Vergil’s touch instinctively, immediately. The bottle slips from his fingers and shatters on the floor. Nothing spills. It was empty.

“You don’t usually touch me, either,” Dante mutters. He wraps his hand around Vergil’s wrist and just holds him like that, gentle and pliant in a way he never is.

Vergil tightens his other hand’s grip on the Yamato. Nothing here feels like an illusion—even if illusions rarely do before shattering around him—but the Yamato’s solid weight proves it’s real. The whisper of her touch at the back of his mind can’t be faked.

This Dante, though. _He_ doesn’t feel real.

 _And how would you know_? he thinks bitterly. _You don’t know him._

He might be learning about his twin again; twenty something odd years from when he is right now, but he missed so much of Dante’s life. The Dante in front of him? Vergil never talked to him in any other way than to clash his blade against Dante’s. Sometimes it’d seemed like the only language they could both speak, before Nero convinced them otherwise.

Vergil could push Dante into releasing his devil; it would clear the alcohol from his bloodstream, make it easier to get answers. But he is reasonably sure his son would suggest talking first.

He should leave. Now that he knows to look out for it, the Yamato would take him to the right time. Nothing good will come of lingering in his own past . . . But he is curious. His quest for power is over; the one for knowledge is never-ending.

What would Nero say?

Something loud, rude and obnoxious that’s more Dante than Vergil, very probably. No, better keep it simple. “What happened?”

Dante’s eyes can’t seem to focus on him, like Vergil isn’t really there.

Vergil lets the Yamato go, slowly; it’s still tied to his waist so he knows it’s _there_. He takes a hold of Dante’s fingers around his wrist and slowly uncurls them, one by one; Dante doesn’t really react. Vergil raises his hand to his lips—and freezes.

There’s an infinitely thin scar going through Dante’s palm.

 _After_ the Temen-Ni-Gru, then.

Vergil _should not_ be there. Good thing Dante seems just drunk enough to forget all about it.

He kisses the scar.  

“You’re _dead_ ,” Dante tells him, staring up at him with accusing eyes.

Vergil knows, intimately, that the version of him belonging to this time _wishes_ he were dead; the desire for an escape, _any_ escape, only dwarfed by the relief that as long as Mundus’ attention is on him, Dante remains safe.

(If only.)

“Yes,” Vergil says aloud. “This is a dream.”

Dante seems to accept that. He’s clearly been on the way to drinking himself unconscious before Vergil’s arrival. He’s uncharacteristically vulnerable, and Vergil doesn’t know what made Dante drink like this, but he doesn’t want to leave him alone here.

“I should’ve jumped after you,” Dante confesses.

“I didn’t _want_ you to jump after me,” Vergil notes. “Come on, brother.” He pulls Dante to his feet, ends up supporting most of his weight.

“We were meant to be _together_.” Dante throws his arm around Vergil’s shoulders. “I can’t go on alone, brother.”

Vergil stops breathing for a few long moments.

Is this what Dante’s trying to do? Is Vergil the _why_?

He’s going to have words with his twin, in his proper time. Blows; more likely.

He tries to manoeuvre Dante to the stairs, but it is a futile endeavour. Any other day, any other circumstances, Vergil would leave him to pass out wherever he fell, but he can’t deny that Dante’s confession shook him to the core. He hooks his hand under Dante’s knees and lifts him. Going up the stairs to Dante’s bedroom only takes a moment. Vergil wrinkles his nose at the state of it, but he lays Dante down on top of his covers.

He presses a kiss to Dante’s lips, and Dante finds enough strength to grasp at Vergil’s coat. “Don’t leave again.”

He pries Dante’s fingers away. “I’m not here, remember?”

Dante doesn’t answer: he passes out.

***

“You’re back early.” Dante’s legs are crossed on his desk, a magazine in his hand; he looks like he has no care in the world but he moves fast enough when Vergil attacks him with his summoned swords without a word.

“Geryon knights can have that effect, Dante.” Vergil’s at him in a second, the Yamato’s bared blade pressing into Dante’s throat: not cutting, but holding him in place, for now.

Dante doesn’t even summon his sword. Vergil _should_ cut him for that. “Is that why you’re so cranky?”

“Do you remember any dreams from when you were 20?” Vergil asks in a silky voice.

Dante frowns at him. “You want to talk about old nightma— _fuck_.”

Vergil scoffs. “Surprising, considering the state you were in.”

Dante does call his sword to himself at that; Vergil lets him push him away and falls into a fighting stance.

“Not fair, Verge,” Dante drawls. “You caught me at a bad moment, no need to rub it in.”

 “ _Bad moment_ ,” Vergil repeats. “And yet that scar never healed. Why is that, little brother?” He hadn’t questioned it the first time he noticed, somehow distracted by Dante’s nakedness at the time.

“I’ve never been a specialist on demonic biology.” Dante shrugs.

They clash in the middle of the room.

“And we just redecorated.” Dante’s grin over his sword is insouciant.

“You were supposed to _live_ ,” Vergil snarls at him, slashing the Yamato in a high bow. “That was the whole point—”

“I lost you for the second time!” Dante yells, parring. “I kept seeing you every time I looked into a mirror, but _you were gone and it was my fault!_ ”

“ _How_ ,” Vergil demands. A particularly strong hit from Dante sends the Yamato flying from his hand.

In a normal mindset, Vergil would’ve never let that happen.

“I should’ve jumped after you,” Dante says, his words the exact same as those of his younger self. The tip of his sword is resting on Vergil’s chest, just over his heart. It’s not a threat: Vergil knows he won’t plunge it in and kill him. There’s a certain kind of power in that awareness; dimmed and useless, though, as Dante seems no more capable of truly hurting him than Vergil is of hurting Dante, these days.

“I am _glad_ you didn’t,” Vergil answers. Dante recoils. He drops his sword, but Vergil doesn’t use the moment to get his own blade back.

He just looks at Dante and sees him from twenty years ago and fifteen minutes ago both.

He was drunk and desperate and accepted Vergil’s presence with no explanation and no excuse, really; clinging to his touch, open and emotionally honest in a way Dante _never_ is, and Vergil—Vergil can’t quite put it together in his head, reconcile that image with his twin. He’d known Dante was hiding a well of darkness behind his easy smiles, just not _what_ caused it.

He’d never wanted this.

Dante’s hand on his cheek isn’t unwelcome; the fact that it’s Dante’s scarred hand probably not accidental. “Hey,” he says. “I’m okay now.”

It’s a bad lie. Neither of them is anywhere near _okay_. But if Vergil had been asked yesterday to list the ways in which _he_ had ruined Dante, he would’ve given an easy answer: the Temen-Ni-Gru; the Qliphoth; all the lives he’s taken. Not: leaving him afterwards.

He understands, suddenly, why Dante had jumped first when they went to cut down the Qliphoth.

Dante’s puts his other hand on the nape of Vergil’s neck. “Are _you_ okay?” His question is quiet and earnest; gentle and sincere. A rare face to Dante, that, and Vergil doesn’t want to meet it with a lie of his own.

He settles on saying, “I hated seeing you like that.”

Dante squeezes his neck. “It was the best dream I’d had for a while. Maybe ever. But I never wanted you to . . .”

“To know what I’ve done to you?” Vergil ends for him.

Dante shrugs. “It doesn’t matter anymore. Clean slate, all of that, right?”

 _If I’d known you needed me, I wouldn’t have left_. It’s on the tip of Vergil’s tongue, but he finds out he’s not sure of that himself. He used to be a different person, before being broken and remade too many times to count.

“And as for the things we’ve done to each other . . .” Dante’s eyes meet his. “I killed you.”

“You set me free,” Vergil corrects him.

He kisses Dante before he can protest. He’s still . . . unsettled, in a way, but with Dante pressed against him he can find his balance.

 _I won’t ever leave again_ , he’d like to promise, but that too isn’t sure, so he settles for wrapping his arms around Dante, memorising this moment.

 


End file.
